Mike Watts - Wellington Construction Manager
Role: Construction Manager
Region: Wellington
Manager: Nick Leko
A born and bred Wellingtonian, Mike grew up in Tawa attending Linden Primary School and Tawa College. After leaving college, he worked for the family business Watts Hardware in Karori before starting his building apprenticeship. During his apprenticeship and some of his qualifying years, Mike worked for S.B. Middleton. This company took on huge multi-dollar renovations in the Wellington region that took out national Master Builder awards for 5 years running.
It required a large professional team of architects and sub-trades to achieve these national awards. Teamwork was paramount and Mike gained many valuable skills during this time. These skills have transferred to Mike’s current professional life, along with being a father, and more recently a “Grand Pop”.
Mike took an opportunity to purchase 15 acres of dairy pasture near the Tui Brewery and sub-divided it into 4/5 lifestyle blocks. Mike coordinated all aspects of this project such as telecommunications, purchasing a transformer to power the homes, laying power cables, land services, installing water tanks and septic tanks systems.
On reflection, Mike found the construction of the homes was the simple part - the challenging part was designing colour schemes, best types of cladding, sun positioning, privacy and fencing. Mike loved working rurally however he never did find the Tui girls… On returning to the city as a self-employed builder, Mike has achieved and completed many renovations and new builds. He still keeps in touch with two apprentices that he guided and who went on to have their own careers.
Mike has been with Refresh since 2016 and has project managed and renovated several homes. Working for Refresh, with an in-house design team has simplified solutions and stream- lined the team’s performance.
